Stalkers RPG General Chat Thread (Emissary Clubhouse)

[arnisd]

No I did not know I was hoarding the stuff. First time participating so no idea what I'm really doing, just trying to help.
So do I need to state it then in the action thread to put all the stuff in the teams inventory?

[Lychee]

No I did not know I was hoarding the stuff. First time participating so no idea what I'm really doing, just trying to help.
So do I need to state it then in the action thread to put all the stuff in the teams inventory?

It's my first time too! It's ok to get things confused, and anyway you ARE being helpful by being our main scavenger! I'm not angry at you at all, just frustrated at this complicated system that has caught us out a few times. Sorry if I seemed snappy!

But yeah, I was pretty sure you didnt mean to hoard. It would be helpful if you state in the action thread on your next action that you put your items into the team inventory. And keep doing it in future so we can all use things together! :D utopian and abyssal items go there automatically, but everything else doesn't seem to.

[arnisd]

It's my first time too! It's ok to get things confused, and anyway you ARE being helpful by being our main scavenger! I'm not angry at you at all, just frustrated at this complicated system that has caught us out a few times. Sorry if I seemed snappy!

But yeah, I was pretty sure you didnt mean to hoard. It would be helpful if you state in the action thread on your next action that you put your items into the team inventory. And keep doing it in future so we can all use things together! :D utopian and abyssal items go there automatically, but everything else doesn't seem to.

Don't worry you didn't come over as angry or such :)
And sure, next time the turn comes around I'll do that

[Neo Emolga]

@ShadowBolt25 @Lychee @Truly @arnisd

Hey guys, sorry about the mess, I'll try to sort this out. I've been trying to be SUPER CAREFUL about not changing any of the rules Suicune's Fire has put into place and have been trying to respectfully help her at the same time. She worked super-hard on this and unfortunately got really busy JUST as this launched.

Hey, why are things suddenly taking so long to get resolved?

Eh heh, part of this is my bad. Well, for one thing, Suicune's Fire and myself both work fulltime and for her, things have been a NIGHTMARE lately, so please don't blame her for the slowdown. She wasn't expecting her new job to be so time-consuming and it was a major reason why I volunteered to help her out (if you weren't aware, I'm the guy who actually made Stalkers RPG and have been a GM for Season 1, 2, 3, and that Squawkers parody version, so this is definitely not my first rodeo doing this). For me, I have some time after work. Not a whole lot, but generally around 2-3 hours or so, so I volunteered that time to help with this.

Yes, I'll admit through most of October, so this past week and then some, I've been doing Inktober 2019, which is an artist challenge involves pushing yourself to do a piece of artwork each day. As I told ShadowBolt25 and a few other people, as of yesterday I've decided to pull the plug on that because it's badly eating into the time spent on this and it's definitely clear you guys are unhappy about the effect that's been having. Rest assured, with the book closed on that, I'll be focusing way more time into this and doing more narrative posts. Again, I wanted to try it and I didn't think it would be a problem, but I just don't think it's working out at the same time with this. Sorry about that.

Hey, it says in the rules Forging example you only need x1 Padded Strip and x2 Iron Ore, but in the Item Directory it says you need 1 Iron Ingot and 1 Padded Strip!

Hmm, yeah, that's a good observation. My guess is the rules were written at a different time than the blueprints and maybe it was meant to be updated, but just got overlooked.

Here's what I'll do.

I'm going to let DracoBolt (ShadowBolt25) get a free dagger on the house and I hope that clears up the disconnect between what he was hoping to do and what Lillian (Lychee) was going to help him with. I'm not going to work it back into the narrative in the interest of getting things moving along rather than going back to edit a narrative most people have probably read by now anyway. It's definitely clear you guys want to get the show on the road. Also, one free [Iron Dagger] isn't like I'm handing over a game-breaking Excalibur anyway. XD

I'm also going to... *takes a deep breath* unlock combining materials for you. I hope Suicune's Fire will be okay with this, but I think once she realizes the chaos that's been caused because of this, I think she'll understand. Basically, it goes like this:

Macro-Weed Fibre [2] > [Padded Strip]
Iron Ore [2] > [Iron Ingot]
Titanium Ore [2] > [Titanium Ingot]
Obsidian Ore [2] > [Obsidian Ingot]

Combining materials also won't eat away your actions. You're free to do that as much as you want and there's no advantage to keeping materials as Ores or Fibres if they can be combined to make Strips and Ingots.

I don't think it's going to be a show-stopper to put the green light on allowing you guys to do this. This Forging system is her creation, and I think she intends it to be a fun extra where some players will gather materials, while others put those materials to work and create weapons and things out of them. To me, I feel it's a really cool and clever idea, but bear in mind it's also new and this system was only JUST introduced this Season. So it's new to me too and this is my first time working with it, but I have a pretty strong idea of where she is going with it. The other thing is as it's a new system, we're also trying to figure out the best way to make it work. Think of it as being a Beta. Not everything may be 100% flawlessly executed the first time around, but rest assured, as soon as we see something that needs to be corrected, we'll try to get on that as soon as we can.

On an official basis, I'm also going to make an update to the rules example that you need the Iron Ingot to do that, not just the Ores.

Hey, why do we have separate inventories and a team inventory?

Yeah, I see where this is causing some chaos, but there was a reason for this.

We introduced consumable items back in Season 2. Crazy thing was, back in that Season, NO ONE was using them. We had the theory that players were reluctant to use them because they felt it was team property and they'd have to go through the trouble of asking everyone permission to use them, even if they were the player who originally found the item to begin with! So she and I had some chats about that and she decided to implement individual inventories so if you were to find Oran Berries that you wanted to save for yourself in case you got injured, some other player wouldn't gobble them up right when you were relying on saving them for a rainy day, leaving you having to Rest or have a Medicine friend come along. Also, we figured it would be WAY easier to ask just one person for one of their items than to get the whole team's approval. And the same goes for the Equipment items and cash as well. Imagine finding 600 splinters and getting the itch to buy some cool equipment item you've been eying for a while, and then someone else goes and blows all the money you found on something you totally didn't think was necessary. So yeah, you can see where the conflict is on this.

But as you guys pointed out, this does create a problem when it comes to Forging and materials. I think the best solution to this is to figure out what items should go into the Team Inventory and which ones should go into Individual Inventories based on how they're used.

Here's my idea, let me know what you guys think:

Money, Consumable, and Equipment items should be both. If they were obtained from a side mission, that's great, but there was a team effort in getting those, so it only seems fair that the whole team can make use of them. However, if someone finds something like money, equipment items, berries and such on their own time, those should be theirs, at least unless they decide to share them with the team.

Materials should be entirely shared, because as we're seeing now, ore and ingots are getting stashed away in personal inventories to peeps who aren't using them. The players who have Forge need immediate access to those and it would be a LOT of trouble to have to ask the Scavengers to share all the time.

Key items like Utopian/Abyssal/Side Mission Articles - Really no reason why these would need to go into an individual inventory. Everyone and anyone may need to make use of these.

If you guys think this is a good layout, let me know, but if you have another preference, just let us know and we'll work with that. :3 No worries.

[ShadowBolt25]

@ShadowBolt25 @Lychee @Truly @arnisd

Hey guys, sorry about the mess, I'll try to sort this out. I've been trying to be SUPER CAREFUL about not changing any of the rules Suicune's Fire has put into place and have been trying to respectfully help her at the same time. She worked super-hard on this and unfortunately got really busy JUST as this launched.

Hey, why are things suddenly taking so long to get resolved?

Eh heh, part of this is my bad. Well, for one thing, Suicune's Fire and myself both work fulltime and for her, things have been a NIGHTMARE lately, so please don't blame her for the slowdown. She wasn't expecting her new job to be so time-consuming and it was a major reason why I volunteered to help her out (if you weren't aware, I'm the guy who actually made Stalkers RPG and have been a GM for Season 1, 2, 3, and that Squawkers parody version, so this is definitely not my first rodeo doing this). For me, I have some time after work. Not a whole lot, but generally around 2-3 hours or so, so I volunteered that time to help with this.

Yes, I'll admit through most of October, so this past week and then some, I've been doing Inktober 2019, which is an artist challenge involves pushing yourself to do a piece of artwork each day. As I told ShadowBolt25 and a few other people, as of yesterday I've decided to pull the plug on that because it's badly eating into the time spent on this and it's definitely clear you guys are unhappy about the effect that's been having. Rest assured, with the book closed on that, I'll be focusing way more time into this and doing more narrative posts. Again, I wanted to try it and I didn't think it would be a problem, but I just don't think it's working out at the same time with this. Sorry about that.

Hey, it says in the rules Forging example you only need x1 Padded Strip and x2 Iron Ore, but in the Item Directory it says you need 1 Iron Ingot and 1 Padded Strip!

Hmm, yeah, that's a good observation. My guess is the rules were written at a different time than the blueprints and maybe it was meant to be updated, but just got overlooked.

Here's what I'll do.

I'm going to let DracoBolt (ShadowBolt25) get a free dagger on the house and I hope that clears up the disconnect between what he was hoping to do and what Lillian (Lychee) was going to help him with. I'm not going to work it back into the narrative in the interest of getting things moving along rather than going back to edit a narrative most people have probably read by now anyway. It's definitely clear you guys want to get the show on the road. Also, one free [Iron Dagger] isn't like I'm handing over a game-breaking Excalibur anyway. XD

I'm also going to... *takes a deep breath* unlock combining materials for you. I hope Suicune's Fire will be okay with this, but I think once she realizes the chaos that's been caused because of this, I think she'll understand. Basically, it goes like this:

Macro-Weed Fibre [2] > [Padded Strip]
Iron Ore [2] > [Iron Ingot]
Titanium Ore [2] > [Titanium Ingot]
Obsidian Ore [2] > [Obsidian Ingot]

Combining materials also won't eat away your actions. You're free to do that as much as you want and there's no advantage to keeping materials as Ores or Fibres if they can be combined to make Strips and Ingots.

I don't think it's going to be a show-stopper to put the green light on allowing you guys to do this. This Forging system is her creation, and I think she intends it to be a fun extra where some players will gather materials, while others put those materials to work and create weapons and things out of them. To me, I feel it's a really cool and clever idea, but bear in mind it's also new and this system was only JUST introduced this Season. So it's new to me too and this is my first time working with it, but I have a pretty strong idea of where she is going with it. The other thing is as it's a new system, we're also trying to figure out the best way to make it work. Think of it as being a Beta. Not everything may be 100% flawlessly executed the first time around, but rest assured, as soon as we see something that needs to be corrected, we'll try to get on that as soon as we can.

On an official basis, I'm also going to make an update to the rules example that you need the Iron Ingot to do that, not just the Ores.

Hey, why do we have separate inventories and a team inventory?

Yeah, I see where this is causing some chaos, but there was a reason for this.

We introduced consumable items back in Season 2. Crazy thing was, back in that Season, NO ONE was using them. We had the theory that players were reluctant to use them because they felt it was team property and they'd have to go through the trouble of asking everyone permission to use them, even if they were the player who originally found the item to begin with! So she and I had some chats about that and she decided to implement individual inventories so if you were to find Oran Berries that you wanted to save for yourself in case you got injured, some other player wouldn't gobble them up right when you were relying on saving them for a rainy day, leaving you having to Rest or have a Medicine friend come along. Also, we figured it would be WAY easier to ask just one person for one of their items than to get the whole team's approval. And the same goes for the Equipment items and cash as well. Imagine finding 600 splinters and getting the itch to buy some cool equipment item you've been eying for a while, and then someone else goes and blows all the money you found on something you totally didn't think was necessary. So yeah, you can see where the conflict is on this.

But as you guys pointed out, this does create a problem when it comes to Forging and materials. I think the best solution to this is to figure out what items should go into the Team Inventory and which ones should go into Individual Inventories based on how they're used.

Here's my idea, let me know what you guys think:

Money, Consumable, and Equipment items should be both. If they were obtained from a side mission, that's great, but there was a team effort in getting those, so it only seems fair that the whole team can make use of them. However, if someone finds something like money, equipment items, berries and such on their own time, those should be theirs, at least unless they decide to share them with the team.

Materials should be entirely shared, because as we're seeing now, ore and ingots are getting stashed away in personal inventories to peeps who aren't using them. The players who have Forge need immediate access to those and it would be a LOT of trouble to have to ask the Scavengers to share all the time.

Key items like Utopian/Abyssal/Side Mission Articles - Really no reason why these would need to go into an individual inventory. Everyone and anyone may need to make use of these.

If you guys think this is a good layout, let me know, but if you have another preference, just let us know and we'll work with that. :3 No worries.

we can still have our inventory & let stuff that is forged have an option to be added to the team inventory ( ideal ) or personal inventory

[Lychee]

Thanks Neo!
I didnt realize forging was also a new system, so that definitely explains the sortof reluctance of old gen players to use it and the confusion of newer players! I'm happy that you're ok to give us a dagger- heck! You can even take the materials for it! I think we did have them in a personal inventory.
But yeah! I'm much happier for coordination if materials go into a team inventory just like the blueprints do. Its not like anyones hanging onto an iron ingot for a rainy day! :P (unless they're playing as meltan or something haha)

I appreciate all the time you're putting into this, and thanks so much for helping us out in the confusion/conflict! I know you're doing your best!
This is literally my favourite game at the moment, and Truly and I have hour long phone calls just scheming and laughing and theorizing and organizing and calculating which wouldn't at all be possible without both yours and suicunes effort and imagination! As much as it might seem like I'm complaining or pushy by posting a lot, it's just because IM THE REAL ENTHUSIASTRIX

[ShadowBolt25]

Thanks Neo!
I didnt realize forging was also a new system, so that definitely explains the sortof reluctance of old gen players to use it and the confusion of newer players! I'm happy that you're ok to give us a dagger- heck! You can even take the materials for it! I think we did have them in a personal inventory.
But yeah! I'm much happier for coordination if materials go into a team inventory just like the blueprints do. Its not like anyones hanging onto an iron ingot for a rainy day! :P (unless they're playing as meltan or something haha)

I appreciate all the time you're putting into this, and thanks so much for helping us out in the confusion/conflict! I know you're doing your best!
This is literally my favourite game at the moment, and Truly and I have hour long phone calls just scheming and laughing and theorizing and organizing and calculating which wouldn't at all be possible without both yours and suicunes effort and imagination! As much as it might seem like I'm complaining or pushy by posting a lot, it's just because IM THE REAL ENTHUSIASTRIX

^ i agree this is a great idea @Neo Emolga
I also appreciate the time you put into this, and i also want to thank you so much for helping us out in this confusion/conflict

[Neo Emolga]

we can still have our inventory & let stuff that is forged have an option to be added to the team inventory ( ideal ) or personal inventory

You could, your choice. You could also equip something right away just after making it, so that's an option, too.

Thanks Neo!
I didnt realize forging was also a new system, so that definitely explains the sortof reluctance of old gen players to use it and the confusion of newer players! I'm happy that you're ok to give us a dagger- heck! You can even take the materials for it! I think we did have them in a personal inventory.
But yeah! I'm much happier for coordination if materials go into a team inventory just like the blueprints do. Its not like anyones hanging onto an iron ingot for a rainy day! :P (unless they're playing as meltan or something haha)

I appreciate all the time you're putting into this, and thanks so much for helping us out in the confusion/conflict! I know you're doing your best!
This is literally my favourite game at the moment, and Truly and I have hour long phone calls just scheming and laughing and theorizing and organizing and calculating which wouldn't at all be possible without both yours and suicunes effort and imagination! As much as it might seem like I'm complaining or pushy by posting a lot, it's just because IM THE REAL ENTHUSIASTRIX

No prob, I decided to move materials out of personal inventories and placed it all in the Team Inventory as well (and I reorganized it as well). This should work better now and having the ability to combine materials now should give that flexibility. But yeah, unlocked blueprints will go into the Stalkers RPG Item Directory because the first few posts are already pretty jam-packed with stuff like the stats, map, search locations, and all that stuff. Blueprints and things like that aren't referenced quite as often, so that's the rationale for that.

And hey, no problem! Glad you're enjoying it and I should be able to get through the remaining posts today to start up the next Cycle.

^ i agree this is a great idea @Neo Emolga
I also appreciate the time you put into this, and i also want to thank you so much for helping us out in this confusion/conflict

Hey, you're welcome, thanks for being great players!

[Suicune's Fire]

Hey fam,

Firstly I just wanted to apologise for all the confusion. It's always a possibility that I've missed something and usually it's a case of the derp.

Combining materials is part of Forge; basically to avoid becoming OP quickly I invented having to combine materials (which in hindsight makes things more annoying) in order to craft them. The issue here is that it was the first time using the system, and I think I actually forgot to mention it anywhere. XD And because so much of this was developed on my own, I haven't passed on certain things to Neo unless it's explicitly written somewhere. I thought I did write it, but turns out I didn't. I apologise for that; that's a combination of an oversight and the first trial of this system. I can also see now that having to combine materials only causes a hefty extra step, especially considering Forge is being used so rarely.

In previous iterations of Stalkers, you had one Learned Action/Ability from the start, and learned a second upon playing. This time, I thought it might be cool to start with none and have to learn both, which made finding teachers more valuable. But a lot of people didn't even learn one action at all, so my takeaway from this is that you should all start with one, like in previous versions, and learn one. Part of the reason I didn't have you start with one was because I introduced Clairvoyance and Forge, and thought it might be more fun to unlock them in gameplay.

Neo's right about separate inventories--it was to encourage people to use items they found, instead of feeling like they were taking resources from other players by using a shared inventory. It's become clear now that this makes things even more awkward, because then you feel like you're taking resources from each other. xD

Would everyone be okay with these immediate changes?

a. Get rid of combinable materials (i.e. Have only Iron Ingots, and no Iron Ore that you have to combine)
b. Combine all inventories into one Team Inventory (but please don't let this discourage you from using shared items!)
c. Learning Abilities can be done for free. Just @ me or Neo in this chat thread with the Abilities you want and we can add it to your stats.


Let me know your thoughts!

@Bulbasaur @Noblejanobii @Chakramaster @EmeraldSky @Scytherwolf @Morzone @HorusMyDude @Arrow-Jolteon @Lychee @sammy0295 @Truly @ARandomTool @LKWayvern @Dragon Master Mike @arnisd @Shruikan @ShadowBolt25


RE: frustrations and impatience:

Please be patient. xD Any such errors stem from me, not Neo. He's only following what I've put in place for him, and because my brain works in weird ways, details sometimes fail to get from my brain into written form. It was easy for me to work things out and tweak them as I went when I was running it by myself. I made my own rules and, I hope it was clear, I'm very willing to compromise. I like improvising and I'm down with the Rule of Cool, which in D&D means that you're willing to bend the rules and ad-lib if it means a better player experience, and more fun. Of course, that is not normally part of Stalkers, and the reason I was running it that way was because it was easy to keep track of everything when it was all just coming out of my brain.

Neo has been extremely courteous and respectful of the systems I've developed, so he is sticking to what I have put in place. Like, I was happy to mess with my own systems and scrap things if I had to, but Neo obviously doesn't want to mess with things that I put in place out of courtesy. So just know that the rules he's passing on to you and running by are things that I have put in place, and very likely things that don't work. I know it's kind of hard to get a hold of me during the week, so Neo is doing his best, which is pretty freaking amazing! So do have mercy on him, because whatever is going on is my fault. XD

That being said, always willing to compromise. :)

[ShadowBolt25]

[FONT=Arial]Hey fam,

Would everyone be okay with these immediate changes?

a. Get rid of combinable materials (i.e. Have only Iron Ingots, and no Iron Ore that you have to combine)
b. Combine all inventories into one Team Inventory (but please don't let this discourage you from using shared items!)
c. Learning Abilities can be done for free. Just @ me or Neo in this chat thread with the Abilities you want and we can add it to your stats.


Let me know your thoughts!

i think we still can have our own inventory's and a free option to put certain stuff in the team inventory
have both combinable materials ( ores ) and ( ingots ) as an option

I have questions about Learning Abilities ( if they become free )

@Neo Emolga